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Babylon and Jerusalem
Revelation 21: 1-8 and John 18:33-37
November 26, 2006
About a year ago, a controversy erupted surrounding photographs of coffins draped with American flags being flown home from Iraq. The coffins contained the bodies of American service men and women killed in the Iraq war. Neither the Bush Administration nor the Pentagon wanted the reality of death publicly displayed.
There is a similar controversy currently brewing in Oakland California. On a prominent hillside visible to passengers on crowded commuter trains, a man has placed a white cross for every service man and woman killed in Iraq--over 2,800--in nice, neat, orderly rows that resemble Arlington cemetery. Some appreciate this recognition of the war dead. Others angrily oppose it.
Since the beginning of the Iraq war, the Bush Administration and several non-governmental organizations have disputed the number of civilian deaths in Iraq, with the non-governmental organizations claiming higher numbers than the Bush Administration. Whatever the number, the loss of civilian life in Iraq is profoundly distressing. On Friday morning, we awoke to learn that a series of car bombs and mortar attacks killed somewhere between 160 and 200 Iraqi civilians, causing the greatest number of civilian deaths on any single day since the war began.
The war in Iraq reminds us yet again, as if we needed reminding, that death is a symptom of war.
Death is a symptom of war--this statement seems to communicate such an obvious truth, we scarcely need to say it. But is it an obvious truth? Or does the statement hide more truth than it reveals?
William Stringfellow thought it did.
William Stringfellow was a lawyer who practiced in the poorest part of Harlem, New York City from the 1960s to the mid-1980s. He was also a Christian who read the Bible with utmost seriousness, and who wrote a number of books critiquing America from a Biblical point of view. One of his most famous statements was that he sought to read America through Biblical eyes, not the Bible through American eyes.
Stringfellow wrote several commentaries on what he believed to be the most political of the Biblical books, the Book of Revelation, and it was through his reading of Revelation that he came to the conclusion that death is not a symptom of war, war is a symptom of death.
To understand what Stringfellow meant by war is a symptom of death, you have to understand what he meant by death. Stringfellow cast a very broad net when he talked about death, and he cast it very deep.
According to Stringfellow';s reading of the Bible, death is everything that happens to human beings as a result of "The Fall." Death is everything that occurs when human beings turn away from God, act independently from God, pledge their allegiance to something other than God, serve something other than God, and love something more than God. Death is all of the power at work in our lives that does not come from God.
If God is the power that creates and affirms life, that causes life to grow, mature, and blossom into the harmonious creation God desires, then death is power that distracts life from God, thereby diminishing, dividing, and degrading life. Death is power that causes life to stagnate, grow in a deformed manner, remain immature, and remain bogged down in conflict and disharmony.
The power of death is ubiquitous in human life. It pervades all the ways we organize our political, social, and economic life together. Death manifests itself in "all nations, institutions, ideologies, images, movements, causes, corporations, bureaucracies, traditions, methods, routines, conglomerates, races, and idols."
Death manifests itself whenever a nation, institution, or system usurps the sovereignty of God over creation. Whenever they glorify their own power. Whenever they capture, manipulate, or seduce people to serve them and their interests instead of God.
Death manifests itself whenever a nation, institution, or system gets inside people';s heads to manipulate their thoughts, or gets inside people';s hearts to manipulate their desires--getting them to fight, kill, and die for national causes, or getting them to consume products they don';t need, products manufactured by exploited labor, products that pollute the earth.
Death is present in the ways governments manufacture consent and promote obedience. Death is present in the way religions produce ideologies of superiority or exclusion, or create fantasies of a paradise in the afterlife to get people to kill other people or resign themselves to their own oppression.
Like I said, Stringfellow casts his net wide and deep when he talks about the power of death at work in our lives. In his reading of the Bible, death is all around us, and deep within us. War is but a symptom of death. In his reading of the Book of Revelation, Stringfellow sees Babylon as a manifestation of death.
In the Book of Revelation, a man named John, who may have been banished by Rome to the island of Patmos off the coast of Turkey, has a series of visions. These visions include a number of classic apocalyptic images, including beasts, angels and other heavenly phenomena, and natural cataclysms. In his climactic vision, he witnesses the fall of Babylon and the heavenly city of Jerusalem descending from heaven.
In Revelation, Babylon refers specifically to Rome. John envisions the fall of Rome and the manifestation of God';s heavenly realm on earth. But Babylon refers to more than Rome. In Biblical thinking after the Jewish exile, Babylon came to symbolize all empires. Babylon symbolized all concentrations of political, economic, and military power organized for the express purpose of making one group of people dominant over other people. Babylon symbolized life organized in opposition to God.
Now as Doyal Pinkard is always quick to point out, empires like Rome were not all bad. Roads and aqueducts were built. Crime was kept in check. Art, literature, and music flourished. There were great intellectual achievements and technological advancements.
But empire was always built on someone';s oppressed and exploited back. Babylon existed for the express purpose of maintaining the ascendancy of some people over other people. The ascendant people always enforced their dominion with the sword. And the ascendant people always developed an ideology that claimed they were dominant because the gods deemed them worthy to rule over everyone else, and that as far as the gods were concerned, the ascendant people would remain dominant forever. To oppose Babylon was to oppose the gods and the divine cosmic order manifest on earth.
In the Book of Revelation, the counterpoint to Babylon is Jerusalem.
If Babylon is an archetype of life organized in opposition to God, then Jerusalem is the archetype of life organized in response to God. Jerusalem is the heavenly realm where God is recognized as sovereign over all creation. It is not heavenly in the sense that it exists in some other dimension or in the afterlife. It is heavenly in the sense that it is where life is lived with God at the very center of existence.
Jerusalem is the heavenly city, the God-centered city, in the sense that it';s political, social, and economic life is organized in service to God. Jerusalem';s political, social, and economic life is organized in a way that enables human life to flourish, grow, and mature, in a way that enables human life to realize the harmony and peace that God desires.
Jerusalem is human life liberated from Babylon. Life lived free of all domination. Life lived free of death.
Jerusalem is the life Jesus lives, manifests, and reveals. Jerusalem is the life Jesus calls people to enter into with him.
Now here comes the interesting part.
When many people read the Book of Revelation, they read it chronologically. That is, they see Revelation dividing time into two different ages, two consecutive ages: a present evil age dominated by Babylon, and a future blessed age that will manifest itself once the holy city of Jerusalem descends from the heavens. They live in the present time, and they wait for the end time. Some look for signs of that end time. Some interpret Revelation';s apocalyptic imagery literally, and see natural disasters, wars, and of rumors of wars as signs of the end, despite Jesus'; express warning not to do so.
Stringfellow and other contemporary biblical scholars and Christians read the Book of Revelation much differently. Rather than seeing two consecutive ages--Babylon now, Jerusalem in the future at the end of time--they see Babylon and Jerusalem both existing right now simultaneously.
Ched Myers, in his reading of apocalyptic literature, claims the authors of this literature had a "bi-focal" view of reality. Wes Howard-Brook calls it a "bifurcated" view of reality. They believe the authors of the apocalyptic literature used dramatic symbols and powerful images to open people';s eyes, to enlighten their consciousness, and to awaken them to the presence of two very different realities that exist simultaneously.
These two realities--Babylon and Jerusalem--are opposing realities. They are realities that contradict one another. They are realities that, to use apocalyptic imagery, are engaged in a spiritual battle with one another for the hearts, and souls, and very lives of human beings--though each side uses very different tactics in this spiritual battle. They are realities that existed simultaneously when Revelation was written, and they are realities that exist simultaneously right now.
With this reading of Revelation, we can recognize Babylon as a symbol for the reality of our political, social, and economic life organized in opposition to God, organized in ways that may build roads, enable great intellectual achievements, allow high art to flourish, and put a million I-pods into the hands of people with a couple of hundred bucks to spare--but also organized in a way that leaves over half of the world';s population living in poverty, and that distorts, diminishes, and degrades the lives of many people in many ways.
In this reading, Babylon is all around us today. Babylon is inside of us. We live in Babylon, conform to Babylon';s ways, and derive much security from Babylon.
And Jerusalem is a symbol for the reality Jesus Christ reveals and calls us to live. Jerusalem is a symbol for the reality Jesus tries to open our eyes to see, the reality he calls us to follow him into by leaving Babylon behind.
In this reading, we don';t simply wait for Jerusalem to arrive from some heavenly, otherworldly realm in the future. We follow Christ, offer our lives to Christ, undergo a transformation of mind, heart, and lifestyle, and enter into and begin to manifest the Jerusalem reality in our own lives.
According to this interpretation, this is what the apocalyptic battle is all about--this spiritual struggle that occurs within us and around us as we live in Babylon, and try to become Jerusalem. As we live in a world that is organized in opposition to God, while trying to re-organize it in response to God. This is exceedingly difficult. It is a spiritual "battle."
I have found this way of looking at scripture and this way of looking at reality incredibly instructive, especially when interpreting Jesus and his message about the kingdom of God.
In today';s lesson from John';s Gospel, Pontius Pilate, an administrator who works for Babylon, asks Jesus if he is a king. Jesus responds, "my kingdom is not of this world, if it were, my followers would be fighting to set me free."
The kingdom of which Jesus is referring is not some otherworldly abode in the afterlife far away in the heavens somewhere. The kingdom to which Jesus is referring is that other reality, that Jerusalem reality, that he is living, manifesting, and revealing right then and there as he stands before Pilate.
My kingdom is not of Babylon, Jesus says, other wise my followers would be acting like people from Babylon--they would be fighting and committing acts of violence. My kingdom is of Jerusalem. My kingdom is a reality where Caesar is not sovereign, but God is sovereign. My kingdom is not one in which people either serve Rome or hang on a cross, my kingdom is where people love God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength, where they love their neighbor as themselves, and where they serve the least of my brothers and sisters. If you want to call me the king of that kingdom, king of that other reality, well go ahead. But king is your word.
The ultimate hope in the apocalyptic literature, the ultimate hope in the gospels, is that Babylon cannot ultimately defeat Jerusalem, even though it looks like it can. Babylon is ascendant and dominant right now. Babylon crucifies Jesus on the cross.
But Christ is resurrected. And lives.
God';s reality may suffer at the hands of Babylon. God';s reality may be whipped bloody, nailed to a cross, and buried in a dark tomb with a giant stone rolled over the entrance, but God';s reality cannot be defeated. God';s reality cannot be silenced.
It cannot because there will always be faithful people struggling to follow Christ, because there will always be people struggling to resist Babylon, to leave Babylon behind, to enter Jerusalem, to become Jerusalem. Jerusalem, in the end, will prevail.
Every week when we pray the Lord';s prayer, we pray to God: "thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."
For me, this part of the prayer is extremely powerful. For me, it means: God, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in Babylon, as it is in Jerusalem. God, may your will be manifest in my life, that I may contribute to transforming Babylon into Jerusalem.
Whatever meaning this prayer has for you, I hope it is as powerful for you as it is for me. Please pray with me: thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
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